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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/detaiis/whygoduseddimood00torr_1 


Why  God  Used 
D.  L.  Moody 

/  By 

R.  A.  TORREY,  D.D. 

Author  of  “How  to  Bring  Men  to  Christ,”  etc. 


Foreword  by 

WILL  H.  HOUGHTON,  D.D. 
President,  The  Moody  Bible  Institute  of  Chicago 


The  Bible  Institute  Colportage  Ass’n 

843'845  North  Wells  Street 


/ 


Copyright,  1923,  by 
Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 

The  Bible  Institute  Colportage  Ass’ 

Owner 


Printed  In  U.  S.  A. 


FOREWORD 


This  little  book  has  been  out  of  print 
for  a  time.  Its  message  is  too  important 
to  be  lost,  so  in  this  form  it  is  presented  to 
the  world  again. 

Dr.  Torrey  knew  Mr.  Moody  inti¬ 
mately.  He  was  associated  with  him  for 
years,  both  in  the  work  of  evangelism  and 
as  the  first  Superintendent  of  The  Moody 
Bible  Institute  of  Chicago. 

Some  of  our  readers  may  take  excep¬ 
tion  to  Dr.  Torrey’s  use  of  the  term,  “the 
baptism  with  the  Holy  Ghost.”  Perhaps 
if  Dr.  Torrey  lived  in  our  day,  and  saw 
some  of  the  wild  fire  in  connection  with 
that  expression,  he  would  use  some  other 
phrase.  But  let  no  one  quibble  about  an 
experience  as  important  as  the  filling  with 
the  Spirit.  In  this  little  book.  Dr.  Torrey 
quotes  Mr.  Moody  as  saying,  in  a  discus¬ 
sion  of  this  very  matter,  “Oh,  why  will 
they  split  hairs?  Why  don’t  they  see  that 


FOREWORD 


this  is  just  the  one  thing  that  they  them¬ 
selves  need?  They  are  good  teachers,  they 
are  wonderful  teachers,  and  I  am  so  glad 
to  have  them  here,  but  why  will  they  not 
see  that  the  baptism  with  the  Holy  Ghost 
is  just  the  one  touch  that  they  themselves 
need?” 

Undoubtedly  there  is  a  fullness  of  the 
Spirit’s  presence  unknown  to  some  Chris¬ 
tians  but  known  to  many,  such  as  D.  L. 
Moody,  F.  B.  Meyer,  George  Mueller, 
and  Andrew  Murray,  the  victorious  “M’s” 
of  recent  church  history.  The  tragedy  is 
that  so  many  are  technically  correct  and 
spiritually  powerless.  What  if  the  bap¬ 
tism  in  the  Holy  Spirit  was  once  and  for 
all,  the  exhortation  “Be  filled  with  the 
Spirit,”  (Eph.  5:18)  still  remains. 

The  ‘Vhy”  of  any  life  is  always  inter¬ 
esting,  but  when  that  life  is  an  outstand¬ 
ing  success  it  becomes  doubly  so.  That 
Mr.  Moody  was  a  successful  man  no  one 
would  deny.  He  accomplished  a  lot  dur¬ 
ing  his  lifetime  and  he  left  organizations 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  which  are 
still  triumphantly  at  work. 


FOREWORD 


A  contemporary  of  Moody,  still  living, 
says  that  he  was  a  much  more  important 
evangelist  than  others  because  he  was  able 
to  put  new  converts  to  work  at  once.  Few 
men  have  had  his  ability  to  get  others 
working.  Indefatigable  himself,  he  in¬ 
spired  others  to  go  at  it. 

Moody  was  a  Wesley,  rather  than  a 
Whitefield,  though  he  had  many  of  the 
qualities  of  both.  But  like  Wesley  he 
did  not  depend  on  his  preaching  alone 
for  results.  He  sought  to  leave  some¬ 
thing  behind.  Undoubtedly  Whitefield 
was  a  better  preacher  than  Wesley.  He 
preached  great  sermons  to  huge  throngs. 
He  held  20,000  spellbound  on  Boston 
Common  as  he  preached  Christ  and  many 
were  saved.  John  Wesley  perhaps  faced 
smaller  crowds,  but  he  did  not  leave  until 
he  left  the  “class  meeting”  behind.  He 
left  a  little  company  and  said  to  them, 
“You  go  out  and  get  others.”  D.  L. 
Moody  believed  that  every  Christian  was 
to  become  a  soul  winner. 

Look  around  and  see  the  institutions 
which  Mr.  Moody  left  in  Great  Britain 


FOREWORD 


and  America.  See  his  printed  sermons 
still  circulated  by  the  scores  of  thousands 
yearly.  See  the  steady  line  of  young 
people  going  through  the  Bible  Institute 
at  Chicago  to  carry  the  Gospel  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth,  and  you  will  realize  that 
Moody  was  a  success. 

God  writes  history  in  terms  of  human 
personality.  The  Book  of  Genesis  gath¬ 
ers  around  eight  men.  The  Bible  presents 
epochs  and  eras,  but  at  the  center  of  each 
is  a  personality,  and  generally  the  man  is 
the  key  to  the  age. 

Much  of  Old  Testament  history  is 
summed  up  in  the  eleventh  of  Hebrews, 
but  it  is  presented  as  the  story  of  human 
life.  God’s  estimate  of  it  all  is  seen  in 
the  men,  Abel,  Enoch,  Noah,  Abraham, 
Moses,  and  so  on. 

Is  it  too  much  to  say  that  God  is  always 
looking  for  a  man  he  can  use?  Notice  the 
word  “use,”  for  there  seem  to  be  four 
ideas  concerning  our  relationship  to  God 
in  service.  Some  teach  that  man  is  in¬ 
structed  of  God.  The  Divine  command 
is  given  and  man  must  obey.  Others  teach 


FOREWORD 


that  in  service  man  is  helped  of  God.  Still 
others,  that  he  is  led  of  God.  All  of  these 
suggest  a  partnership  with  Deity.  The 
fourth  idea,  and  the  right  one,  is  that  man 
can  be  used  of  God.  This  demands  the 
surrender  and  submission  of  a  Christian. 
This  looks  to  God  for  enablement  and 
gives  to  Him  the  glory. 

Moody  was  used  of  God. 

Men  pass.  Nations  rise  and  fall.  Cus¬ 
toms  change.  Accepted  philosophies  are 
discarded  like  last  year’s  garments.  But 
it  is  ever  true  that  God  is  looking  for  a 
man  He  can  use.  Will  you  be  that  man? 

Will  H.  Houghton. 


November,  1936 


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•  i' ■;■>/'* .  I. 


why  God  Used  D.  L.  Moody 


Eighty-six  years  ago  (Feb- 

uary  5,  1837)  there  was  born  of 
poor  parents  in  a  humble  farm¬ 
house  in  Northfield,  Massachusetts,  a  little 
baby  who  was  to  become  the  greatest  man, 
as  I  believe,  of  his  generation  or  of  his 
century — ^Dwight  L.  Moody.  After  our 
great  generals,  great  statesmen,  great 
scientists  and  great  men  of  letters  have 
passed  away  and  been  forgotten  and  their 
work  and  its  helpful  influence  has  come  to 
an  end,  the  work  of  D.  L.  Moody  will  go 
on  and  its  saving  influence  continue  and 
increase,  bringing  blessing  not  only  to 
every  State  in  the  Union  but  to  every 
nation  on  earth.  Yes,  it  will  continue 
throughout  the  ages  of  eternity. 

My  subject  is  “  Why  God  Used  D.  L. 
Moody,”  and  I  can  think  of  no  subject 

upon  which  I  would  rather  speak.  For 

6 


6  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


I  shall  not  seek  to  glorify  Mr.  Moody,  but 
the  God  Who  by  His  grace.  His  entirely 
unmerited  favour,  used  him  so  mightily, 
and  the  Christ  Who  saved  him  by  His 
atoning  death  and  resurrection  life,  and 
the  Holy  Spirit  Who  lived  in  him  and 
wrought  through  him  and  Who  alone 
made  him  the  mighty  power  that  he  was 
to  this  world.  Furthermore:  I  hope  to 
make  it  clear  that  the  God  Who  used  D. 
L.  Moody  in  his  day  is  just  as  ready  to 
use  you  and  me,  in  this  day,  if  we,  on  our 
part,  do  what  D.  L.  Moody  did,  which 
was  what  made  it  possible  for  Grod  to  so 
abundantly  use  him. 

The  whole  secret  of  why  D.  L.  Moody 
was  such  a  mightily  used  man  you  will 
find  in  Psalm  62:  11:  “  God  hath  spoken 
once,  twice  have  I  heard  this,  that  power 
BELONGETH  UNTO  GoD.”  I  am  glad  it  does. 
I  am  glad  that  power  did  not  belong  to 
D.  L.  Moody;  I  am  glad  that  it  did  not 
belong  to  Charles  G.  Finney;  I  am  glad 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  7 


that  it  did  not  belong  to  Martin  Luther; 
I  am  glad  that  it  did  not  belong  to  any 
other  Christian  man  whom  God  has 
greatly  used  in  this  world’s  history. 
Power  belongs  to  God.  If  D.  L.  Moody 
had  any  power,  and  he  had  great  power, 
he  got  it  from  God. 

But  God  does  not  give  His  power  arbi¬ 
trarily.  It  is  true  that  He  gives  it  to 
whomsoever  He  will,  but  He  wills  to  give 
it  on  certain  conditions,  which  are  clearly 
revealed  in  His  Word,  and  D.  L.  Moody 
met  those  conditions  and  God  made  him 
the  most  wonderful  preacher  of  his  genera¬ 
tion  ;  yes,  I  think  the  most  wonderful  man 
of  his  generation. 

But  how  was  it  that  D.  L.  Moody  had 
that  power  of  God  so  wonderfully  mani¬ 
fested  in  his  life?  Pondering  this  ques¬ 
tion  it  seemed  to  me  that  there  were  seven 
things  in  the  life  of  D.  L.  Moody  that  ac¬ 
counted  for  God’s  using  him  so  largely  as 
He  did. 


I 


8  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


I.  A  Fully  Surrendered  Man 
The  first  thing  that  accounts  for  God’s 
using  D.  L.  Moody  so  mightily  was  that 
he  was  a  fully  surrendered  man.  Every 
ounce  of  that  two-hundred-and-eighty- 
pound  body  of  his  belonged  to  God;  every¬ 
thing  he  was  and  everything  he  had,  be¬ 
longed  wholly  to  God.  Now,  I  am  not 
saying  that  Mr.  Moody  was  perfect;  he 
was  not.  If  I  attempted  to,  I  presume  I 
could  point  out  some  defects  in  his  char¬ 
acter.  It  does  not  occur  to  me  at  this 
moment  what  they  were;  but  I  am  con¬ 
fident  that  I  could  think  of  some,  if  I  tried 
real  hard.  I  have  never  yet  met  a  perfect 
man,  not  one.  I  have  known  perfect  men 
in  the  sense  in  which  the  Bible  commands 
us  to  be  perfect,  i.  e.,  men  who  are  wholly 
God’s,  out-and-out  for  God,  fully  surren¬ 
dered  to  God,  with  no  will  but  God’s  will ; 
but  I  have  never  known  a  man  in  whom  I 
could  not  see  some  defects,  some  places 
where  he  might  have  been  improved.  No : 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  9 


Mr.  Moody  was  not  a  faultless  man.  If  he 
had  any  flaws  in  his  character,  and  he  had, 
I  presume  I  was  in  a  position  to  know 
them  better  than  almost  any  other  man, 
because  of  my  very  close  association  with 
him  in  the  later  years  of  his  life;  and, 
furthermore,  I  suppose  that  in  his  latter 
days  he  opened  his  heart  to  me  more  fully 
than  to  any  one  else  in  the  world.  I  think 
he  told  me  some  things  that  he  told  no  one 
else.  I  presume  I  knew  whatever  defects 
there  were  in  his  character  as  well  as  any¬ 
body.  But  while  I  recognized  such  flaws, 
nevertheless,  I  know  that  he  was  a  man 
who  belonged  wholly  to  God. 

The  first  month  I  was  in  Chicago,  we 
were  having  a  talk  about  something  upon 
which  we  very  widely  differed,  and  Mr. 
Moody  turned  to  me  very  frankly  and 
very  kindly  and  said  in  defense  of  his  own 
position:  “  Torrey,  if  I  believed  that  God 
wanted  me  to  jump  out  of  that  window,  I 
would  jump.”  I  believe  he  would.  If  he 


10  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


thought  God  wanted  him  to  do  anything 
he  would  do  it.  He  belonged  wholly,  un¬ 
reservedly,  unqualifiedly,  entirely,  to  God. 

Henry  Varley,  a  very  intimate  friend 
of  Mr.  Moody  in  the  earlier  days  of  his 
work,  loved  to  tell  how  he  once  said  to  him ; 
“It  remains  to  be  seen  what  God  will  do 
with  a  man  who  gives  himself  up  wholly  to 
Him.”  I  am  told  that  when  Mr.  Henry 
Varley  said  that  Mr.  Moody  said  to  him¬ 
self:  “Well,  I  will  be  that  man.”  And 
I,  for  my  part,  do  not  think  “  it  remains  to 
be  seen  ”  what  God  will  do  with  a  man  who 
gives  himself  up  wholly  to  Him.  I  think 
it  has  been  seen  already  in  D.  L.  Moody. 
If  you  and  I  are  to  be  used  in  our  sphere 
as  D.  L.  Moody  was  used  in  his,  we  must 
put  all  that  we  have  and  all  that  we  are  in 
the  hands  of  God,  for  Him  to  use  as  He 
will,  to  send  us  where  He  will,  for  God  to 
do  with  us  what  He  will,  and  we,  on  our 
part,  to  do  everything  God  bids  us  do. 
There  are  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  11 


of  men  and  women  in  Christian  work,  bril¬ 
liant  men  and  women,  rarely  gifted  men 
and  women,  men  and  women  who  are  mak¬ 
ing  great  sacrifices,  men  and  women  who 
have  put  all  conscious  sin  out  of  their  lives, 
yet  who,  nevertheless,  have  stopped  short 
of  absolute  surrender  to  God,  and  there¬ 
fore  have  stopped  short  of  fullness  of 
power.  But  Mr.  Moody  did  not  stop 
short  of  absolute  surrender  to  God ;  he  was 
a  wholly  surrendered  man,  and  if  you  and 
I  are  to  be  used,  you  and  I  must  be  wholly 
surrendered  men  and  women. 

II.  A  Man  or  Prayer 

The  second  secret  of  the  great  power 
exhibited  in  Mr.  Moody’s  life  was  that 
Mr,  Moody  was  in  the  deepest  and  most 
meaningful  sense  a  man  of  prayer.  People 
oftentimes  say  to  me:  “  Well,  I  went  many 
miles  to  see  and  to  hear  D.  L.  Moody  and 
he  certainly  was  a  wonderful  preacher.” 
Yes,  D.  L.  Moody  certainly  was  a  wonder- 


12  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


ful  preacher;  taking  it  all  in  all,  the  most 
wonderful  preacher  I  have  ever  heard,  and 
it  was  a  great  privilege  to  hear  him  preach 
as  he  alone  could  preach ;  but  out  of  a  very 
intimate  acquaintance  with  him  I  wish  to 
testify  that  he  was  a  far  greater  pray-er 
than  he  was  preacher.  Time  and  time 
again,  he  was  confronted  by  obstacles  that 
seemed  insurmountable,  but  he  always 
knew  the  way  to  surmount  and  to  over¬ 
come  all  difficulties.  He  knew  the  way  to 
bring  to  pass  anything  that  needed  to  be 
brought  to  pass.  He  knew  and  believed 
in  the  deepest  depths  of  his  soul  that 
“  nothing  was  too  hard  for  the  Lord  ”  and 
that  prayer  could  do  anything  that  God 
could  do. 

Oftentimes  Mr.  Moody  would  write  me 
when  he  was  about  to  undertake  some  new 
work,  saying:  “  I  am  beginning  work  in 
such  and  such  a  place  on  such  and  such 
a  day;  I  wish  you  would  get  the  students 
together  for  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer,” 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  13 


and  often  I  have  taken  those  letters  and 
read  them  to  the  students  in  the  lecture 
room  and  said:  “Mr.  Moody  wants  us 
to  have  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer,  first 
for  God’s  blessing  on  our  own  souls  and 
work,  and  then  for  God’s  blessing  on  him 
and  his  work.”  Often  we  were  gathered 
in  the  lecture  room  far  into  the  night — 
sometimes  till  one,  two,  three,  four  or 
even  five  o’clock  in  the  morning,  crying  to 
God,  just  because  Mr.  Moody  urged  us 
to  wait  upon  God  until  we  received  His 
blessing.  How  many  men  and  women  I 
have  known  whose  lives  and  characters 
have  been  transformed  by  those  nights  of 
prayer  and  who  have  wrought  mighty 
things  in  many  lands  because  of  those 
nights  of  prayer! 

One  day  Mr.  Moody  drove  up  to  my 
house  at  Northfield  and  said:  “  Torrey,  I 
want  you  to  take  a  ride  with  me.”  I  got 
into  the  carriage  and  we  drove  out  towards 
Lover’s  Lane,  talking  about  some  great 


14  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L  MOODY 


and  unexpected  difficulties  that  had  arisen 
in  regard  to  the  work  in  Northfield  and 
Chicago,  and  in  connection  with  other 
work  that  was  very  dear  to  him.  As  we 
drove  along,  some  black  storm-clouds  lay 
ahead  of  us,  and  then  suddenly,  as  we  were 
talking,  it  began  to  rain.  He  drove  the 
horse  into  a  shed  near  the  entrance  to 
Lover’s  Lane  to  shelter  the  horse,  and 
then  laid  the  reins  upon  the  dashboard  and 
said:  “  Torrey,  pray;  ”  and  then,  as  best 
I  could,  I  prayed,  while  he  in  his  heart 
joined  me  in  prayer.  And  when  my  voice 
was  silent  he  began  to  pray.  Oh,  I  wish 
you  could  have  heard  that  prayer !  I  shall 
never  forget  it,  so  simple,  so  trustful,  so 
definite  and  so  direct  and  so  mighty.  When 
the  storm  was  over  and  we  drove  back  to 
town,  the  obstacles  had  been  surmounted, 
and  the  work  of  the  schools,  and  other 
work  that  was  threatened,  went  on  as  it 
had  never  gone  on  before,  and  it  has  gone 
on  until  this  day.  As  we  drove  back,  Mr. 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  15 


Moody  said  to  me:  ‘‘  Torrey,  we  will  let 
the  other  men  do  the  talldng  and  the 
criticizing,  and  we  will  stick  to  the  work 
that  God  has  given  us  to  do,  and  let  Him 
take  care  of  the  difficulties  and  answer  the 
criticisms.” 

On  one  occasion  Mr.  Moody  said  to  me 
in  Chicago:  “  I  have  just  found,  to  my 
surprise,  that  we  are  twenty  thousand  dol¬ 
lars  behind  in  our  finances  for  the  work 
here  and  in  Northfield,  and  we  must  have 
that  twenty  thousand  dollars,  and  I  am 
going  to  get  it  by  prayer.”  He  did  not 
tell  a  soul  who  had  the  ability  to  give  a 
penny  of  the  twenty  thousand  dollars 
deficit,  but  looked  right  to  God  and  said: 
“  I  need  twenty  thousand  dollars  for  my 
work;  send  me  that  money  in  such  a  way 
that  I  will  know  it  comes  straight  from 
Thee.”  And  God  heard  that  prayer. 
The  money  came  in  such  a  way  that  it  was 
clear  that  it  came  from  God,  in  direct 
answer  to  prayer.  Yes,  D.  L.  Moody 


16  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


was  a  man  who  believed  in  the  God  Who 
answers  prayer,  and  not  only  believed  in 
Him  in  a  theoretical  way  but  believed  in 
Him  in  a  practical  way.  He  was  a  man 
who  met  every  difficulty  that  stood  in  his 
way — by  prayer.  Everything  he  under¬ 
took  was  backed  up  by  prayer,  and  in 
everything,  his  ultimate  dependence  was 
upon  God. 

III.  A  Deep  and  Practical  Student 

OF  THE  Bible 

The  third  secret  of  Mr.  Moody’s  power, 
or  the  third  reason  why  God  used  D.  L. 
Moody,  was  because  he  was  a  deep  and 
practical  student  of  the  Word  of  God, 
Nowadays  it  is  often  said  of  D.  L. 
Moody  that  he  was  not  a  student.  I  wish 
to  say  that  he  was  a  student;  most  em¬ 
phatically  he  was  a  student.  He  was  not 
a  student  of  psychology,  he  was  not  a 
student  of  anthropology — I  am  very  sure 
he  would  not  have  known  what  that  word 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  17 


meant — he  was  not  a  student  of  biology, 
he  was  not  a  student  of  philosophy,  he  was 
not  even  a  student  of  theology,  in  the 
technical  sense  of  the  term,  but  he  was  a 
student,  a  profound  and  practical  student 
of  the  one  Book  that  is  more  worth  study¬ 
ing  than  all  other  books  in  the  world  put 
together;  he  was  a  student  of  the  Bible. 
Every  day  of  his  life,  I  have  reason  for 
believing,  he  arose  very  early  in  the  morn¬ 
ing  to  study  the  Word  of  God,  way  down 
to  the  close  of  his  life.  Mr.  Moody  used 
to  rise  about  four  o'clock  in  the  morning 
to  study  the  Bible.  He  would  say  to  me : 
“  If  I  am  going  to  get  in  any  study,  I 
have  got  to  get  up  before  the  other  folks 
get  up,”  and  he  would  shut  himself  up  in 
a  remote  room  in  his  house,  alone  with  his 
God  and  his  Bible. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  first  night  I 
spent  in  his  home.  He  had  invited  me  to 
take  the  superintendency  of  the  Bible  In¬ 
stitute  and  I  had  already  begun  my  work. 


18  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


was  on  my  way  to  some  city  in  the  East 
to  preside  at  the  International  Christian 
Workers’  Convention.  He  wrote  me 
saying:  “  Just  as  soon  as  the  Convention 
is  over,  come  up  to  Northfield.”  He 
learned  when  I  was  likely  to  arrive  and 
drove  over  to  South  Vernon  to  meet  me. 
That  night  he  had  all  the  teachers  from 
the  Mount  Hermon  School  and  from  the 
Northfield  Seminary  come  together  at  the 
house  to  meet  me,  and  to  talk  over  the 
problems  of  the  two  Schools.  We  talked 
together  far  on  into  the  night,  and  then, 
after  the  principals  and  teachers  of  the 
Schools  had  gone  home,  Mr.  Moody  and  I 
talked  together  about  the  problems  a  while 
longer.  It  was  very  late  when  I  got  to 
bed  that  night,  but  very  early  the  next 
morning,  about  five  o’clock,  I  heard  a 
gentle  tap  on  my  door.  Then  I  heard  Mr. 
Moody’s  voice  whispering:  ‘‘  Torrey,  are 
you  up?”  I  happened  to  be;  I  do  not 
always  get  up  at  that  early  hour,  but  I 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  19 


happened  to  be  up  that  particular  morn¬ 
ing.  He  said:  “  I  want  you  to  go  some¬ 
where  with  me/’  and  I  went  down  with 
him.  Then  I  found  out  that  he  had  al¬ 
ready  been  up  an  hour  or  two  in  his  room 
studying  the  Word  of  God. 

Oh,  you  may  talk  about  power;  but,  if 
you  neglect  the  one  Book  that  God  has 
given  you  as  the  one  instrument  through 
which  He  imparts  and  exercises  His 
power,  you  will  not  have  it.  You  may 
read  many  books  and  go  to  many  conven¬ 
tions  and  you  may  have  your  all-night 
prayer  meetings  to  pray  for  the  power  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  but  unless  you  keep  in 
constant  and  close  association  with  the  one 
book,  the  Bible,  you  will  not  have  power. 
And  if  you  ever  had  power,  you  will  not 
maintain  it  except  by  the  daily,  earnest, 
intense  study  of  that  Book.  Ninety-nine 
Christians  in  every  hundred  are  merely 
playing  at  Bible  study;  and  therefore 
ninety-nine  Christians  in  every  hundred 


20  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


are  mere  weaklings^  when  they  might  he 
giants,  both  in  their  Christian  life  and  in 
their  service. 

It  was  largely  because  of  his  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  Bible,  and  his  practical 
knowledge  of  the  Bible,  that  Mr.  Moody 
drew  such  immense  crowds.  On  “  Chicago 
Day,”  in  October  1893,  none  of  the 
theatres  of  Chicago  dared  to  open  because 
it  was  expected  that  everybody  in  Chi¬ 
cago  would  go  on  that  day  to  the  World’s 
Fair,  and,  in  point  of  fact,  something  like 
four  hundred  thousand  people  did  pass 
through  the  gates  of  the  Fair  that  day. 
Everybody  in  Chicago  was  expected  to  be 
at  that  end  of  the  city  on  that  day.  But 
Mr.  Moody  said  to  me:  “  Torrey,  engage 
the  Central  Music  Hall  and  announce 
meetings  from  nine  o’clock  in  the  morning 
till  six  o’clock  at  night.”  “  Why,”  I  re¬ 
plied,  “  Mr.  Moody,  nobody  will  be  at  this 
end  of  Chicago  on  that  day;  not  even  the 
theatres  dare  to  open;  everybody  is  going 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  21 


down  to  Jackson  Park  to  the  Fair;  we  can¬ 
not  get  anybody  out  on  this  day/’  Mr. 
Moody  replied:  “  You  do  as  you  are  told,” 
and  I  did  as  I  was  told,  and  engaged  the 
Central  Music  Hall  for  continuous  meet¬ 
ings  from  nine  o’clock  in  the  morning  till 
six  o’clock  at  night.  But  I  did  it  with  a 
heavy  heart;  I  thought  there  would  be 
poor  audiences.  I  was  on  the  program  at 
noon  that  day.  Being  very  busy  in  my 
office  about  the  details  of  the  campaign,  I 
did  not  reach  the  Central  Music  Hall  till 
almost  noon.  I  thought  I  would  have  no 
trouble  in  getting  in.  But  when  I  got 
almost  to  the  Hall  I  found  to  my  amaze¬ 
ment  that  not  only  was  it  packed  but  the 
vestibule  was  packed  and  the  steps  were 
packed,  and  there  was  no  getting  any¬ 
where  near  the  door ;  and  if  I  had  not  gone 
round  and  climbed  in  a  back  window  they 
would  have  lost  their  speaker  for  that 
hour.  But  that  would  not  have  been  of 
much  importance,  for  the  crowds  had  not 


22  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


gathered  to  hear  me;  it  was  the  magic  of 
Mr.  Moody’s  name  that  had  drawn  them. 
And  why  did  they  long  to  hear  Mr. 
Moody?  Because  they  knew  that  while 
he  was  not  versed  in  many  of  the  philos¬ 
ophies  and  fads  and  fancies  of  the  day, 
that  he  did  know  the  one  Book  that  this 
old  world  most  longs  to  know — the  Bible. 

I  shall  never  forget  Moody’s  last  visit 
to  Chicago.  The  ministers  of  Chicago 
had  sent  me  to  Cincinnati  to  invite  him  to 
come  to  Chicago  and  hold  a  meeting.  In 
response  to  the  invitation,  Mr.  Moody 
said  to  me:  “  If  you  will  hire  the  Audi¬ 
torium  for  week-day  mornings  and  after¬ 
noons  and  have  meetings  at  ten  in  the 
morning  and  three  in  the  afternoon,  I  will 
go.”  I  replied:  ‘‘  Mr.  Moody,  you  know 
what  a  busy  city  Chicago  is,  and  how  im¬ 
possible  it  is  for  business  men  to  get  out  at 
ten  o’clock  in  the  morning  and  three  in  the 
afternoon  on  working  days.  Will  you 
not  hold  evening  meetings  and  meetings 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  23 


on  Sunday?  ”  “  No,”  he  replied,  “  I  am 

afraid  if  I  did,  I  would  interfere  with  the 

« 

regular  work  of  the  churches.” 

I  went  back  to  Chicago  and  engaged  the 
Auditorium,  which  at  that  time  was  the 
building  having  the  largest  seating  capac¬ 
ity  of  any  building  in  the  city,  seating  in 
those  days  about  seven  thousand  people, 
and  announced  week-day  meetings,  with 
Mr.  Moody  as  the  speaker,  at  ten  o’clock 
in  the  mornings  and  three  o’clock  in  the 
afternoons.  At  once  protests  began  to 
pour  in  upon  me.  One  of  them  came  from 
Marshall  Field,  at  that  time  the  business 
king  of  Chicago.  “  Mr.  Torrey,”  Mr. 
Field  wrote,  “  we  business  men  of  Chicago 
wish  to  hear  Mr.  Moody  and  you  know 
perfectly  well  how  impossible  it  is  for  us 
to  get  out  at  ten  o’clock  in  the  morning 
and  three  o’clock  in  the  afternoon;  have 
evening  meetings.”  I  received  many  let¬ 
ters  of  a  similar  purport  and  wrote  to  Mr. 
Moody  urging  him  to  give  us  evening 


24  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


meetings.  But  Mr.  Moody  simply  re¬ 
plied:  “  You  do  as  you  are  told,”  and  I  did 
as  I  was  told;  that  is  the  way  I  kept  my 
job. 

On  the  first  morning  of  the  meetings  I 
went  down  to  the  Auditorium  about  half 
an  hour  before  the  appointed  time,  but  I 
went  with  much  fear  and  apprehension; 
I  thought  the  Auditorium  would  be  no¬ 
where  nearly  full.  When  I  reached  there, 
to  my  amazement  I  found  a  queue  of 
people  four  abreast  extending  from  the 
Congress  Street  entrance  to  Wabash 
Avenue,  then  a  block  north  on  Wabash 
Avenue,  then  a  break  to  let  traffic  through, 
and  then  another  block,  and  so  on.  I 
went  in  through  the  back  door,  and  there 
were  many  clamoring  for  entrance  there. 
When  the  doors  were  opened  at  the  ap¬ 
pointed  time,  we  had  a  cordon  of  twenty 
policemen  to  keep  back  the  crowd,  but  the 
crowd  was  so  great  that  it  swept  the 
cordon  of  policemen  off  their  feet  and 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  25 


packed  eight  thousand  people  into  the 
building  before  we  could  get  the  doors 
shut.  And  I  think  there  were  as  many 
left  on  the  outside  as  there  were  in  the 
building.  I  do  not  think  that  any  one  else 
in  the  world  could  have  drawn  such  a 
crowd  at  such  a  time. 

Why?  Because  though  Mr.  Moody 
loiew  little  about  science,  or  philosophy, 
or  literature,  in  general,  he  did  know  the 
one  Book  that  this  old  world  is  perishing 
to  know  and  longing  to  know,  and  this  old 
world  will  flock  to  hear  men  who  know 
the  Bible  and  preach  the  Bible  as  they 
will  flock  to  hear  nothing  else  on  earth. 

During  all  the  months  of  the  World’s 
Fair  in  Chicago,  no  one  could  draw  such 
crowds  as  Mr.  Moody.  Judging  by  the 
papers,  one  would  have  thought  that  the 
great  religious  event  in  Chicago  at  that 
time  was  the  World’s  Congress  of  Relig¬ 
ions.  One  very  gifted  man  of  letters  in 
the  East  was  invited  to  speak  at  this  Con- 


26  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


gress.  He  saw  in  this  invitation  the  op¬ 
portunity  of  his  life,  and  prepared  his 
paper,  the  exact  title  of  which  I  do  not  now 
recall,  but  it  was  something  along  the  line 
of  “  New  Light  on  the  Old  Doctrines.” 
He  prepared  the  paper  with  great  care, 
and  then  sent  it  around  to  his  most  trusted 
and  gifted  friends  for  criticisms.  These 
men  sent  it  back  to  him  with  such  emenda¬ 
tions  as  they  had  to  suggest.  Then  he  re¬ 
wrote  the  paper,  incorporating  as  many  of 
the  suggestions  and  criticisms  as  seemed 
wise.  Then  he  sent  it  around  for  further 
criticisms.  Then  he  wrote  the  paper  a 
third  time,  and  had  it,  as  he  trusted,  per¬ 
fect.  He  went  on  to  Chicago  to  meet  this 
coveted  opportunity  of  speaking  at  the 
World’s  Congress  of  Religions.  It  was 
at  eleven  o’clock  on  a  Saturday  morning 
(if  I  remember  correctly)  that  he  was  to 
speak.  He  stood  outside  the  door  of  the 
platform  waiting  for  the  great  moment 
to  arrive,  and  as  the  clock  struck  eleven 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  27 


walked  on  to  the  platform  to  face  a  mag¬ 
nificent  audience  of  eleven  women  and  two 
men!  But  there  was  not  a  building  any¬ 
where  in  Chicago  that  would  accommodate 
the  very  same  day  the  crowds  that  would 
flock  to  hear  Mr.  Moody  at  any  hour  of 
the  day  or  night.  Oh  men  and  women, 
if  you  wish  to  get  an  audience  and  wish  to 
do  that  audience  some  good  after  you  get 
them,  study,  study,  study  the  one  Book, 
and  preach,  preach,  preach  the  one  Book, 
and  teach,  teach,  teach  the  one  Book,  the 
Bible,  the  only  Book  that  contains  God’s 
Word,  and  the  only  Book  that  has  power 
to  gather,  and  hold,  and  bless  the  crowds 
for  any  great  length  of  time. 

IV.  A  Humble  Man 

The  fourth  reason  why  God  continu¬ 
ously,  through  so  many  years,  used  D.  L. 
Moody  was  because  he  was  a  humble  man. 
I  think  D.  L.  Moody  was  the  humblest 
man  I  ever  knew  in  all  my  life.  He  loved 


28  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


to  quote  the  words  of  another:  “  Faith  gets 
the  most,  love  works  the  most,  but  humility 
keeps  the.  most/"  He  himself  had  the 
humility  that  keeps  everything  it  gets.  As 
I  have  already  said,  he  was  the  most  hum¬ 
ble  man  I  ever  knew,  i.  e.,  the  most  humble 
man  when  we  bear  in  mind  the  great 
things  he  did,  and  the  praise  that  was 
lavished  upon  him.  Oh,  how  he  loved  to 
put  himself  in  the  background  and  put 
other  men  in  the  foreground.  How  often 
he  would  stand  on  a  platform  with  some 
of  us  little  fellows  seated  behind  him  and 
as  he  spake  he  would  say:  “  There  are 
better  men  coming  after  me.”  As  he  said 
it,  he  would  point  back  over  his  shoulder 
with  his  thumb  to  the  “  little  fellows.”  I 
do  not  know  how  he  could  believe  it,  but 
he  really  did  believe  that  the  others  that 
were  coming  after  him  were  really  better 
than  he  was.  He  made  no  pretense  to  a 
humility  he  did  not  possess.  In  his  heart 
of  hearts  he  constantly  underestimated 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  29 


himself,  and  overestimated  others.  He 
really  believed  that  God  would  use  other 
men  in  a  larger  measure  than  he  had  been 
used. 

Mr.  Moody  loved  to  keep  himself  in 
the  background.  At  his  conventions  at 
Northfield,  or  anywhere  else,  he  would 
push  the  other  men  to  the  front  and,  if  he 
could,  have  them  do  all  the  preaching — 
McGregor,  Campbell  Morgan,  Andrew 
Murray,  and  the  rest  of  them.  The  only 
way  we  could  get  him  to  take  any  part  in 
the  program  was  to  get  up  in  the  conven¬ 
tion  and  move  that  we  hear  D.  L.  Moody 
at  the  next  meeting.  He  continually  put 
himself  out  of  sight. 

Oh,  how  many  a  man  has  been  full  of 
promise  and  God  has  used  him,  and  then 
the  man  thought  that  he  was  the  whole 
thing  and  God  was  compelled  to  set  him 
aside!  I  believe  more  promising  workers 
have  gone  on  the  rocks  through  self- 
sufficiency  and  self-esteem  than  through 


30  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


any  other  cause.  I  can  look  back  for 
forty  years,  or  more,  and  think  of  many 
men  who  are  now  wrecks  or  derelicts 
who  at  one  time  the  world  thought  were 
going  to  be  something  great.  But  they 
have  disappeared  entirely  from  the  public 
view.  Wh}^?  Because  of  overestima¬ 
tion  of  self.  Oh,  the  men  and  women  who 
have  been  put  aside  because  they  began  to 
think  that  they  were  somebody,  that  they 
were  “  it,”  and  therefore  God  was  com¬ 
pelled  to  set  them  aside. 

I  remember  a  man  with  whom  I  was 
closely  associated  in  a  great  movement  in 
this  country.  We  were  having  a  most 
successful  convention  in  Buffalo,  and  he 
was  greatly  elated.  As  we  walked  down 
the  street  together  to  one  of  the  meetings 
one  day,  he  said  to  me:  “  Torrey,  you  and 
I  are  the  most  important  men  in  Christian 
work  in  this  country  ”  (or  words  to  that 
effect) .  I  replied:  ‘‘  John,  I  am  sorry  to 
hear  you  say  that;  for  as  I  read  my  Bible  I 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  31 


find  man  after  man  who  had  accomplished 
great  things  whom  God  had  to  set  aside 
because  of  his  sense  of  his  own  impor¬ 
tance.”  And  God  set  that  man  aside  also 
from  that  time.  I  think  he  is  still  living, 
but  no  one  ever  hears  of  him,  and  has  not 
heard  of  him  for  years. 

God  used  D.  L.  Moody,  I  think,  beyond 
any  man  of  his  day,  but  it  made  no  dif¬ 
ference  how  much  God  used  him,  he  never 
was  puffed  up.  One  day,  speaking  to  me 
of  a  great  New  Y"ork  preacher,  now  dead, 
Mr.  Moody  said:  “He  once  did  a  very 
foolish  thing,  the  most  foolish  thing  that 
I  ever  knew  a  man,  ordinarily  so  wise  as 
he  was,  to  do.  He  came  up  to  me  at  the 
close  of  a  little  talk  I  had  given  and  said: 


‘  Young  man,  you  have  made  a  great  ad¬ 
dress  to-night.’  ”  Then  Mr.  Moody  con¬ 
tinued:  “  How  foolish  of  him  to  have  said 
that;  it  almost  turned  my  head.”  But, 
thank  God,  it  did  not  turn  his  head,  and 
even  when  pretty  much  all  the  ministers  vv 


32  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


England,  Scotland  and  Ireland,  and  many 
of  the  English  bishops  were  ready  to  fol¬ 
low  D.  L.  Moody  wherever  he  led,  even 
then  it  never  turned  his  head  one  bit.  He 
would  get  down  on  his  face  before  God, 
knowing  he  was  human,  and  ask  God  to 
empty  him  of  all  self-sufficiency.  And 
God  did. 

Oh  men  and  women!  especially  young 
men  and  young  women,  perhaps  God  is 
beginning  to  use  you;  very  likely  people 
are  saying:  “  What  a  wonderful  gift  he 
has  as  a  Bible  teacher,  what  power  he  has 
as  a  preacher,  for  such  a  young  man!” 
Listen:  get  down  upon  your  face  before 
God.  I  believe  here  lies  one  of  the  most 
dangerous  snares  of  the  devil.  When  the 
devil  cannot  discourage  a  man,  he  ap¬ 
proaches  him  on  another  tack,  which  he 
knows  is  far  worse  in  its  results ;  he  puffs 
him  up  by  whispering  in  his  ear:  “You  are 
the  leading  evangelist  of  the  day.  You 
are  the  man  who  will  sweep  everything  be- 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  33 


fore  you.  You  are  the  coming  man. 
You  are  the  D.  L.  Moody  of  the  day,” 
and  if  you  listen  to  him,  he  will  ruin  you. 
The  entire  shore  of  the  history  of  Chris¬ 
tian  workers  is  strewn  with  the  wrecks  of 
gallant  vessels  that  were  full  of  promise 
a  few  years  ago,  but  these  men  became 
puffed  up  and  were  driven  on  the  rocks  by 
the  wild  winds  of  their  own  raging  self¬ 
esteem. 

V.  His  Entire  Freedom  From  the 

Love  of  Money 

The  fifth  secret  of  D.  L.  Moody’s  con¬ 
tinual  power  and  usefulness  was  Ms 
entire  freedom  from  the  love  of  money. 
Mr.  Moody  might  have  been  a  wealthy 
man,  but  money  had  no  charms  for  him. 
He  loved  to  gather  money  for  God’s  work ; 
he  refused  to  accumulate  money  for  him¬ 
self.  He  told  me  during  the  World’s 
Fair  that  if  he  had  taken,  for  himself,  the 
royalties  on  the  hymn  books  which  he  had 


34  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


published,  they  would  have  amounted,  at 
that  time,  to  a  million  dollars.  But  Mr. 
Moody  refused  to  touch  the  money.  He 
had  a  perfect  right  to  take  it,  for  he  was 
responsible  for  the  publication  of  the 
books,  and  it  was  his  money  that  went  into 
the  publication  of  the  first  of  them.  Mr. 
Sankey  had  some  hymns  that  he  had  taken 
with  him  to  England  and  he  wished  to 
have  them  published.  He  went  to  a  pub¬ 
lisher  (I  think  Morgan  &  Scott)  and  they 
declined  to  publish  them,  because,  as  they 
said,  Philip  Phillips  had  recently  been  over 
and  published  a  hymn  book  and  it  had  not 
done  well.  However,  Mr.  Moody  had  a 
little  money  and  he  said  that  he  would  put 
it  into  the  publication  of  these  hymns  in 
cheap  form  and  he  did.  The  hymns  had 
a  most  remarkable  and  unexpected  sale; 
they  were  then  published  in  book  form  and 
large  profits  accrued.  The  financial  re¬ 
sults  were  offered  to  Mr.  Moody,  but  he 
refused  to  touch  them.  “  But,”  it  was 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  35 


urged  on  him,  “  the  money  belongs  to 
you,”  but  he  would  not  touch  it.  Mr. 
Fleming  H.  Revell  was  at  the  time  treas¬ 
urer  of  the  Chicago  Avenue  Church,  com¬ 
monly  known  as  the  Moody  Tabernacle. 
Only  the  basement  of  this  new  church 
building  had  been  completed,  funds  having 
been  exhausted.  Hearing  of  the  hymn- 
book  situation  Mr.  Revell  suggested,  in  a 
letter  to  friends  in  London,  that  the  money 
be  given  for  completion  of  this  building, 
and  it  was.  Afterwards,  so  much  money 
came  in  that  it  was  given,  by  the  committee 
into  whose  hands  Mr.  Moody  put  the  mat¬ 
ter,  to  various  Christian  enterprises. 

In  a  certain  city  to  which  Mr.  Moody 
went  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  and 
where  I  went  with  him,  it  was  publicly 
announced  that  Mr.  Moody  would  accept 
no  money  whatever  for  his  services.  Now, 
in  point  of  fact,  Mr.  Moody  was  depend¬ 
ent,  in  a  measure,  upon  what  was  given 
him  at  various  services,  but  when  this  an- 


36  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


nouncement  was  made,  Mr.  Moody  said 
nothing,  and  left  that  city  without  a 
penny’s  compensation  for  the  hard  work 
he  did  there  and,  I  think,  paid  his  own 
hotel  bill.  And  yet  a  minister  in  that  very 
city  came  out  with  an  article  in  a  paper, 
which  I  read,  in  which  he  told  a  fairy  tale 
of  the  financial  demands  that  Mr.  Moody 
made  upon  them,  which  story  I  knew  per¬ 
sonally  to  be  absolutely  untrue.  Millions 
of  dollars  passed  into  Mr.  Moody’s  hands, 
hut  they  passed  through;  they  did  not  stick 
to  his  fingers. 

This  is  the  point  at  which  many  an 
evangelist  makes  shipwreck,  and  his  great 
work  comes  to  an  untimely  end.  The  love 
of  money  on  the  part  of  some  evangelists 
has  done  more  to  discredit  evangelistic 
work  in  our  day,  and  to  lay  many  an 
evangelist  on  the  shelf,  than  almost  any 
other  cause.  While  I  was  away  on  my 
recent  tour  I  was  told  by  one  of  the  most 
reliable  ministers  in  one  of  our  eastern 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  37 


cities  of  a  campaign  conducted  by  one  who 
has  been  greatly  used  in  the  past.  (Do 
not  imagine,  for  a  moment,  that  I  am 
speaking  of  Billy  Sunday,  for  I  am 
not ;  this  same  minister  spoke  in  the  highest 
terms  of  Mr.  Sunday  and  of  a  campaign 
which  he  conducted  in  a  city  where  this 
minister  was  a  pastor.)  This  evangelist 
of  whom  I  now  speak  came  to  a  city  for  a 
united  evangelistic  campaign  and  was  sup¬ 
ported  by  fifty-three  churches.  The  min¬ 
ister  who  told  me  about  the  matter  was 
himself  chairman  of  the  Finance  Commit¬ 
tee.  The  evangelist  showed  such  a  long¬ 
ing  for  money  and  so  deliberately  violated 
the  agreement  he  had  made  before  coming 
to  the  city  and  so  insisted  upon  money 
being  gathered  for  him  in  other  ways  than 
he  had  himself  prescribed  in  the  original 
contract,  that  this  minister  threatened  to 
resign  from  the  Finance  Committee.  He 
was  however  persuaded  to  remain  to  avoid 
a  scandal.  “As  the  total  result  of  the 


88  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


three  weeks’  campaign  there  were  only 
twenty-four  clear  decisions,”  said  my 
friend,  “  and  after  it  was  over  the  minis¬ 
ters  got  together  and  by  a  vote  with 
but  one  dissenting  voice,  they  agreed  to 
send  a  letter  to  this  evangelist  telling  him 
frankly  that  they  were  done  with  him  and 
with  his  methods  of  evangelism  forever, 
and  that  they  felt  it  their  duty  to  warn 
other  cities  against  him  and  his  methods 
and  the  results  of  his  work.”  Let  us  lay 
the  lesson  to  our  hearts  and  take  warning 
in  time. 

VI.  His  Consuming  Passion  for  the 
Salvation  of  the  Lost 

The  sixth  reason  why  God  used  D.  L. 
Moody  was  because  of  Ms  consuming 
passion  for  the  salvation  of  the  lost,  Mr. 
Moody  made  the  resolution,  shortly  after 
he,  himself,  was  saved,  that  he  would  never 
let  twenty-four  hours  pass  over  his  head 
without  speaking  to  at  least  one  person 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  39 


about  his  soul.  His  was  a  very  busy  life, 
and  sometimes  he  would  forget  his  resolu¬ 
tion  until  the  last  hour,  and  sometimes  he 
would  get  out  of  bed,  dress,  go  out  and 
talk  to  some  one  about  his  soul  in  order 
that  he  might  not  let  one  day  pass  without 
having  definitely  told  at  least  one  of  his 
fellow-mortals  about  his  need  and  the 
Saviour  Who  could  meet  it. 

One  night  Mr.  Moody  was  going  home 
from  his  place  of  business.  It  was  very 
late,  and  it  suddenly  occurred  to  him  that 
he  had  not  spoken  to  one  single  person  that 
day  about  accepting  Christ.  He  said  to 
himself:  “  Here’s  a  day  lost.  I  have  not 
spoken  to  any  one  to-day  and  I  shall  not 
see  anybody  at  this  late  hour.”  But  as  he 
walked  up  the  street  he  saw  a  man  stand¬ 
ing  under  a  lamp-post.  The  man  was  a 
perfect  stranger  to  him,  though  it  turned 
out  afterwards  the  man  knew  who  Mr. 
Moody  was.  He  stepped  up  to  this 
stranger  and  said:  “Are  you  a  Christian?  ” 


40  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


The  man  replied:  “  That  is  none  of  your 
business,  whether  I  am  a  Christian  or  not. 
If  you  were  not  a  sort  of  a  preacher  I 
would  knock  you  into  the  gutter  for  your 
impertinence.” 

Mr.  Moody  said  a  few  earnest  words  and 
passed  on.  The  next  day  that  man  called 
upon  one  of  Mr.  Moody’s  prominent  busi¬ 
ness  friends  and  said  to  him:  “  That  man 
Moody  of  yours  over  on  the  north  side  is 
doing  more  harm  than  he  is  good.  He  has 
got  zeal  without  knowledge.  He  stepped 
up  to  me  last  night,  a  perfect  stranger,  and 
insulted  me.  He  asked  me  if  I  were  a 
Christian,  and  I  tc"d  him  it  was  none  of 
his  business  and  if  he  were  not  a  sort  of  a 
preacher  I  would  knock  him  into  the  gut¬ 
ter  for  his  impertinence.  He  is  doing 
more  harm  than  he  is  good.  He  has  got 
zeal  without  knowledge.”  Mr.  Moody’s 
friend  sent  for  him  and  said:  “Moody, 
you  are  doing  more  harm  than  you  are 
good;  you’ve  got  zeal  without  knowledge: 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  41 


you  insulted  a  friend  of  mine  on  the  street 
last  night.  You  went  up  to  him,  a  perfect 
stranger,  and  asked  him  if  he  were  a 
Christian,  and  he  tells  me  if  you  had  not 
been  a  sort  of  a  preacher  he  would  have 
knocked  you  into  the  gutter  for  your  im¬ 
pertinence.  You  are  doing  more  harm 
than  you  are  good ;  you  have  got  zeal  with¬ 
out  knowledge.” 

Mr.  IMoody  went  out  of  that  man’s  office 
somewhat  crestfallen.  He  wondered  if  he 
were  not  doing  more  harm  than  he  was 
good,  if  he  really  had  zeal  without  knowl¬ 
edge.  (Let  me  say,  in  passing,  it  is  far 
better  to  have  zeal  without  knowledge  than 
it  is  to  have  loiowledge  without  zeal. 
Some  men  and  women  are  as  full  of  knowl¬ 
edge  as  an  egg  is  of  meat;  they  are  so 
deeply  versed  in  Bible  truth  that  they  can 
sit  in  criticism  on  the  preachers  and  give 
the  preachers  pointers,  but  they  have  so 
little  zeal  that  they  do  not  lead  one  soul  to 
Christ  in  a  whole  year.)  Weeks  passed 


42  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


by.  One  night  Mr.  Moody  was  in  bed 
when  he  heard  a  tremendous  pounding  at 
his  front  door.  He  jumped  out  of  bed 
and  rushed  to  the  door.  He  thought  the 
house  was  on  fire.  He  thought  the  man 
would  break  down  the  door.  He  opened 
the  door  and  there  stood  this  man.  He 
said:  “  Mr.  Moody,  I  have  not  had  a  good 
night’s  sleep  since  that  night  you  spoke  to 
me  under  the  lamp-post,  and  I  have  come 
around  at  this  unearthly  hour  of  the  night 
for  you  to  tell  me  what  I  have  to  do  to 
be  saved.” 

Mr.  Moody  took  him  in  and  told  him 
what  to  do  to  be  saved.  Then  he  accepted 
Christ,  and  when  the  Civil  War  broke  out, 
he  went  to  the  front  and  laid  down  his  life 
fighting  for  his  country. 

Another  night,  Mr.  Moody  got  home 
and  had  gone  to  bed  before  it  occurred  to 
him  that  he  had  not  spoken  to  a  soul  that 
day  about  accepting  Christ.  “  Well,”  he 
said  to  himself,  “  it  is  no  good  getting  up 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  43 


now ;  there  will  be  nobody  on  the  street  at 
this  hour  of  the  night.”  But  he  got  up, 
dressed  and  went  to  the  front  door.  It 
was  pouring  rain.  “  Oh,”  he  said,  “  there 
will  be  no  one  out  in  this  pouring  rain.” 
Just  then  he  heard  the  patter  of  a  man’s 
feet  as  he  came  down  the  street,  holding 
an  umbrella  over  his  head.  Then  Mr. 
Moody  darted  out  and  rushed  up  to  the 
man  and  said:  “  May  I  share  the  shelter  of 
your  umbrella?  ”  “  Certainly,”  the  man 

replied.  Then  Mr.  Moody  said:  “  Have 
you  any  shelter  in  the  time  of  storm?  ” 
and  preached  Jesus  to  him.  Oh,  men  and 
women,  if  we  were  as  full  of  zeal  for  the 
salvation  of  souls  as  that,  how  long  would 
it  be  before  the  whole  country  would  be 
shaken  by  the  power  of  a  mighty,  God- 
sent  revival? 

One  day  in  Chicago — ^the  day  after  the 
elder  Carter  Harrison  was  shot,  when  his 
body  was  lying  in  state  in  the  City  Hall — 
Mr.  Moody  and  I  were  riding  up  Ran- 


44  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


dolph  Street  together  in  a  street  car  right 
alongside  of  the  City  Hall.  The  car  could 
scarcely  get  through  because  of  the  enor¬ 
mous  crowds  waiting  to  get  in  and  view 
the  body  of  Mayor  Harrison.  As  the  car 
tried  to  push  its  way  through  the  crowd, 
Mr.  Moody  turned  to  me  and  said: 
“  Torrey,  what  does  this  mean?  ” 
“  Why,’’  I  said,  ‘‘  Carter  Harrison’s  body 
lies  there  in  the  City  Hall  and  these 
crowds  are  waiting  to  see  it.”  Then  he 
said:  “  This  will  never  do,  to  let  these 
crowds  get  away  from  us  without  preach¬ 
ing  to  them ;  we  must  talk  to  them.  You 
go  and  hire  Hooley’s  Opera  House  (which 
was  just  opposite  the  City  Hall)  for  the 
whole  day.”  I  did  so.  The  meetings 
began  at  nine  o’clock  in  the  morning,  and 
we  had  one  continuous  service  from  that 
hour  until  six  in  the  evening,  to  reach  those 
crowds. 

Mr.  Moody  was  a  man  on  fire  for  God. 
Not  only  was  he  always  “  on  the  job  ” 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  45 


himself  but  he  was  always  getting  others 
to  work  as  well.  He  once  invited  me 
down  to  Northfield  to  spend  a  month  there 
with  the  schools,  speaking  first  to  one 
school  and  then  crossing  the  river  to  the 
other.  I  was  obliged  to  use  the  ferry  a 
great  deal ;  it  was  before  the  present  bridge 
was  built  at  that  point.  One  day  he  said 
to  me:  “  Torrey,  did  you  know  that  that 
ferryman  that  ferries  you  across  every  day 
was  unconverted?  ”  He  did  not  tell  me 
to  speak  to  him,  but  I  knew  what  he 
meant.  When  some  days  later  it  was  told 
him  that  the  ferryman  was  saved,  he  was 
exceedingly  happy. 

Once,  when  walking  down  a  certain 
street  in  Chicago,  Mr.  Moody  stepped  up 
to  a  man,  a  perfect  stranger  to  him,  and 
said:  “  Sir,  are  you  a  Christian?  ”  “  You, 
mind  your  own  business,”  was  the  reply. 
Mr.  Moody  replied:  “This  is  my  busi¬ 
ness.”  The  man  said:  “  Well,  then,  you 
must  be  Moody.”  Out  in  Chicago  they 


46  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


used  to  call  him  in  those  early  days  “  Crazy 
Moody,”  because  day  and  night  he  was 
speaking  to  everybody  he  got  a  chance  to 
speak  to  about  being  saved.  One  time  he 
was  going  to  Milwaukee,  and  in  the  seat 
that  h"^  had  chosen  sat  a  travelling  man. 
Mr.  Moody  sat  down  beside  him  and  im¬ 
mediately  began  to  talk  with  him.  “  Where 
are  you  going?  ”  Mr.  Moody  asked. 
When  told  the  name  of  the  town  he  said; 
“  W e  will  soon  be  there;  we’ll  have  to  get 
down  to  business  at  once.  Are  you 
saved?  ”  The  man  said  that  he  was  not, 
and  Mr.  Moody  took  out  his  Bible  and 
there  on  the  train  showed  him  the  way  of 
salvation.  Then  he  said:  “Now,  you 
must  take  Christ.”  The  man  did;  he  was 
converted  right  there  on  the  train. 

Most  of  you  have  heard,  I  presume,  the 
story  President  Wilson  used  to  tell  about 
D.  L.  Moody.  Ex-President  Wilson  said 
that  he  once  went  into  a  barber  shop  and 
took  a  chair  next  to  the  one  in  which  D.  L. 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  47 


Moody  was  sitting,  though  he  did  not  know 
that  Mr.  Moody  was  there.  He  had  not 
been  in  the  chair  very  long  before,  as  ex- 
President  Wilson  phrased  it,  he  “  knew 
there  was  a  personality  in  the  other  chair,” 
and  He  began  to  listen  to  the  conversation 
going  on,  and  he  heard  Mr.  Moody  tell  the 
barber  about  the  Way  of  Life,  and 
President  Wilson  said,  “  I  have  never  for¬ 
gotten  that  scene  to  this  day.”  When 
Mr.  Moody  was  gone,  he  asked  the  barber 
who  he  was,  and  he  was  told  that  it  was 
D.  L.  Moody,  and  President  Wilson  said: 
“  It  made  an  impression  upon  me  I  have 
not  yet  forgotten.” 

On  one  occasion  in  Chicago  Mr.  Moody 
saw  a  little  girl  standing  on  the  street  with 
a  pail  in  her  hand.  He  went  up  to  her 
and  invited  her  to  his  Sunday  School,  tell¬ 
ing  her  what  a  pleasant  place  it  was.  She 
promised  to  go  the  following  Sunday,  but 
she  did  not  do  so.  Mr.  Moody  watched 
for  her  for  weeks,  and  then  one  day  he  saw 


48  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


her  on  the  street  again,  at  some  distance 
from  him.  He  started  towards  her,  but  she 
saw  him  too  and  started  to  run  away.  Mr. 
Moody  followed  her.  Down  she  went  one 
street,  Mr.  Moody  after  her,  up  she  went 
another  street,  Mr.  Moody  after  her, 
through  an  alley,  Mr.  Moody  still  follow¬ 
ing,  out  on  another  street,  Mr.  Moody 
after  her,  then  she  dashed  into  a  saloon 
and  Mr.  Moody  dashed  after  her.  She 
ran  out  the  back  door  and  up  a  flight 
of  stairs,  Mr.  Moody  still  following;  she 
dashed  into  a  room,  Mr.  Moody  following, 
and  threw  herself  under  the  bed  and  Mr. 
Moody  reached  under  the  bed  and  pulled 
her  out  by  the  foot,  and  led  her  to  Christ. 

He  found  that  her  mother  was  a  widow 
who  had  once  seen  better  circumstances, 
but  had  gone  down  until  now  she  was  liv¬ 
ing  over  this  saloon.  She  had  several 
children.  Mr.  Moody  led  the  mother  and 
all  the  family  to  Christ.  Several  of  the 
children  were  prominent  members  of  the 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  49 


Moody  Church  until  they  moved  away, 
and  afterwards  became  prominent  in 
churches  elsewhere.  This  particular  child, 
whom  he  pulled  from  underneath  the  bed, 
was,  when  I  was  the  pastor  of  the  Moody 
Church,  the  wife  of  one  of  the  most  promi¬ 
nent  officers  in  the  church.  Only  two  or 
three  years  ago,  as  I  came  out  of  a  ticket 
office  in  Memphis,  Tennessee,  a  fine  look¬ 
ing  young  man  followed  me.  He  said: 
“Are  you  not  Dr.  Torrey?  ”  I  said, 
“  Yes.”  He  said;  “  I  am  so  and  so.”  He 
was  the  son  of  this  woman.  He  was  then 
a  travelling  man,  and  an  officer  in  the 
church  where  he  lived.  When  Mr.  Moody 
pulled  that  little  child  out  from  under  the 
bed  by  the  foot  he  was  pulling  a  whole 
family  into  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and 
eternity  alone  will  reveal  how  many  suc¬ 
ceeding  generations  he  was  pulling  into 
the  Kingdom  of  God. 

D.  L.  Moody’s  consuming  passion  for 
souls  was  not  for  the  souls  of  those  who 


50  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


would  be  helpful  to  him  in  building  up  his 
work  here  or  elsewhere;  his  love  for  souls 
knew  no  class  limitations.  He  was  no 
respecter  of  persons;  it  might  be  an  earl 
or  a  duke  or  it  might  be  an  ignorant  col¬ 
oured  boy  on  the  street ;  it  was  all  the  same 
to  him ;  there  was  a  soul  to  save  and  he  did 
what  lay  in  his  power  to  save  that  soul. 
A  friend  once  told  me  that  the  first  time 
he  ever  heard  of  Mr.  Moody  was  when 
Mr.  Revnolds  of  Peoria  told  him  that  he 
once  found  Mr.  Moody  sitting  in  one  of 
the  squatters’  shanties  that  used  to  be  in 
that  part  of  the  city  towards  the  lake, 
which  was  then  called,  “  The  Sands,”  with 
a  coloured  boy  on  his  knee,  a  tallow  candle 
in  one  hand  and  a  Bible  in  the  other,  and 
Mr.  Moody  was  spelling  out  the  words 
(for  at  that  time  he  could  not  read  very 
well)  of  certain  verses  of  Scripture,  in  an 
attempt  to  lead  that  ignorant  coloured  boy 
to  Christ.  Oh,  young  men  and  women 
and  all  Christian  workers,  if  you  and  I 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  51 


were  on  fire  for  souls  like  that,  how  long 
would  it  be  before  we  had  a  revival?  Sup¬ 
pose  that  to-night  the  fire  of  God  falls  and 
fills  our  hearts,  a  burning  fire  that  will  send 
us  out  all  over  the  country,  and  across  the 
water  to  China,  Japan,  India,  and  Africa, 
to  tell  lost  souls  the  way  of  salvation ! 

VII.  Definitely  Endued  With  Power 

From  on  High 

The  seventh  thing  that  was  the  secret  of 
why  God  used  D.  L.  Moody  was  that, 
he  had  a  very  definite  endnement  with 
power  from  on  high,  a  very  clear  and  def¬ 
inite  baptism  with  the  Holy  Ghost.  Mr. 
Moody  knew  he  had  “  the  baptism  with  the 
Holy  Ghost,”  he  had  no  doubt  about  it. 
In  his  early  days  he  was  a  great  hustler, 
he  had  a  tremendous  desire  to  do  some¬ 
thing,  but  he  had  no  real  power.  He 
worked  very  largely  in  the  energy  of  the 
flesh.  But  there  were  two  humble  Free 
Methodist  women  who  used  to  come  over 


62  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


to  his  meetings  in  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  One 
was  “Auntie  Cook  ”  and  the  other  Mrs. 
Snow.  (I  think  her  name  was  not  Snow 
at  that  time.)  These  two  women  would 
come  to  Mr.  Moody  at  the  close  of  his 
meetings  and  say:  “We  are  praying  for 
you.”  Finally,  Mr.  Moody  became  some¬ 
what  nettled  and  said  to  them  one  night: 
“  Why  are  you  praying  for  me?  Why 
don’t  you  pray  for  the  unsaved?  ”  They 
replied:  “We  are  praying  that  you  may 
get  the  power.”  Mr.  Moody  did  not  know 
what  that  meant,  but  he  got  to  thinking 
about  it,  and  then  went  to  these  women 
and  said:  “  I  wish  you  would  tell  me  what 
you  mean,”  and  they  told  him  about  the 
definite  baptism  with  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Then  he  asked  that  he  might  pray  with 
them  and  not  they  merely  pray  for  him. 

Auntie  Cook  once  told  me  of  the  intense 
fervour  with  which  Mr.  Moody  prayed  on 
that  occasion.  She  told  me  in  words  that 
I  scarcely  dare  repeat,  though  I  have  never 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  63 


forgotten  them.  And  he  not  only  prayed 
with  them,  but  he  also  prayed  alone.  Not 
long  after,  one  day  on  his  way  to  England, 
he  was  walking  up  Wall  Street  in  New 
York  (Mr.  Moody  very  seldom  told  this 
and  I  almost  hesitate  to  tell  it)  and  in  the 
midst  of  the  bustle  and  hurry  of  that  city 
his  prayer  was  answered;  the  power  of 
God  fell  upon  him  as  he  walked  up  the 
street  and  he  had  to  hurry  off  to  the  house 
of  a  friend  and  ask  that  he  might  have  a 
room  bv  himself,  and  in  that  room  he 
stayed  alone  for  hours;  and  the  Holy 
Ghost  came  upon  him  filling  his  soul  with 
such  joy  that  at  last  he  had  to  ask  God  to 
withhold  His  hand,  lest  he  die  on  the  spot 
from  very  joy.  He  went  out  from  that 
place  with  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
upon  him,  and  when  he  got  to  London 
(partly  through  the  prayers  of  a  bedridden 
saint  in  Mr.  Lessey’s  church)  the  power  of 
God  wrought  through  him  mightily  in 
North  London  and  hundreds  were  added 


64  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


to  the  churches,  and  that  was  what  led  to 
his  being  invited  over  to  the  wonderful 
campaign  that  followed  in  later  years. 

Time  and  again  Mr.  Moody  would  come 
to  me  and  say:  “  Torrey,  I  want  you  to 
preach  on  baptism  with  the  Holy  Ghost.” 
I  do  not  know  how  many  times  he  asked 
me  to  speak  on  that  subject.  Once,  when 
I  had  been  invited  to  preach  in  the  Fifth 
Avenue  Presbyterian  Church,  New  York 
(invited  at  Mr.  Moody’s  suggestion; 
had  it  not  been  for  his  suggestion  the 
invitation  would  never  have  been  ex¬ 
tended  to  me),  just  before  I  started  for 
New  York,  Mr.  Moody  drove  up  to  my 
house  and  said:  “  Torrey,  they  want  you  to 
preach  at  the  Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian 
Church  in  New  York.  It  is  a  great,  big 
church,  cost  a  million  dollars  to  build  it.” 
Then  he  continued:  “  Torrey,  I  just 
want  to  ask  one  thing  of  you.  I  want  to 
tell  you  what  to  preach  about.  You  will 
preach  that  sermon  of  yours  on  ‘  Ten  Rea- 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  55 


sons  Why  I  Believe  the  Bible  to  be  the 
Word  of  God  ’  and  your  sermon  on  ‘  The 
Baptism  with  the  Holy  Ghost.’  ”  Time 
and  again,  when  a  call  came  to  me  to  go 
off  to  some  church,  he  would  come  up  to 
me  and  say;  “  Now,  Torrey,  be  sure  and 
preach  on  the  baptism  with  the  Holy 
Ghost.”  I  do  not  know  how  many  times 
he  said  that  to  me.  Once  I  asked  him: 
“  Mr.  Moody,  don’t  you  think  I  have  any 
sermons  but  those  two :  ‘  Ten  Reasons 
Why  I  Believe  the  Bible  to  be  the  Word 
of  God  ’  and  ‘  The  Baptism  with  the  Holy 
Ghost  ’  ?  ”  ‘‘  Never  mind  that,”  he  re¬ 

plied,  ‘‘  you  give  them  those  two  sermons.” 

Once  he  had  some  teachers  at  North- 
field — fine  men,  all  of  them,  but  they  did 
not  believe  in  a  definite  baptism  with  the 
Holy  Ghost  for  the  individual.  They  be¬ 
lieved  that  every  child  of  God  was  bap¬ 
tized  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  they  did 
not  believe  in  any  special  baptism  with  the 
Holv  Ghost  for  the  individual.  Mr. 


66  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


Moody  came  to  me  and  said:  “  Torrey, 
will  you  come  up  to  my  house  after  the 
meeting  to-night  and  I  will  get  those  men 
to  come,  and  I  want  you  to  talk  this  thing 
out  with  them,”  Of  course,  I  very  readily 
consented,  and  Mr.  Moody  and  I  talked 
for  a  long  time,  but  they  did  not  altogether 
see  eye  to  eye  with  us.  And  when  they 
went,  Mr.  Moody  signalled  me  to  remain 
for  a  few  moments.  Mr.  Moody  sat  there 
with  his  chin  on  his  breast,  as  he  so  often 
sat  when  he  was  in  deep  thought;  then  he 
looked  up  and  said:  ‘‘  Oh,  why  will  they 
split  hairs?  Why  don’t  they  see  that  this 
is  just  the  one  thing  that  they  themselves 
need?  They  are  good  teachers,  they  are 
wonderful  teachers,  and  I  am  so  glad  to 
have  them  here,  but  why  will  they  not  see 
that  the  baptism  with  the  Holy  Ghost  is 
just  the  one  touch  that  they  themselves 
need?  ” 

I  shall  never  forget  the  8th  of  July, 
1894,  to  my  dying  day.  It  was  the  closing 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  6Y 


day  of  the  Northfield  Students’  Confer¬ 
ence — the  gathering  of  the  students  from 
the  eastern  colleges.  Mr.  Moody  had  asked 
me  to  preach  on  Saturday  night  and  Sun¬ 
day  morning  on  The  Baptism  with  the 
Holy  Ghost.  On  Saturday  night  I  had 
spoken  about  ‘‘  The  Baptism  with  the 
Holy  Ghost,  What  it  is,  What  it  does,  the 
Need  of  it  and  the  Possibility  of  it.”  On 
Sunday  morning  I  spoke  on  “  The  Bap¬ 
tism  with  the  Holy  Spirit,  How  to  Get 
It.”  It  was  just  exactly  twelve  o’clock 
when  I  finished  my  morning  sermon,  and  I 
took  out  my  watch  and  said;  “  Mr.  Moody 
has  invited  us  all  to  go  up  on  the  mountain 
at  three  o’clock  this  afternoon  to  pray  for 
the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  It  is  three 
hours  to  three  o’clock.  Some  of  you  can¬ 
not  wait  three  hours.  You  do  not  need 
to  wait.  Go  to  your  rooms,  go  out  into 
the  woods,  go  to  your  tent,  go  anywhere 
where  you  can  get  alone  with  God  and 
have  this  matter  out  with  Him.”  At 


58  WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY 


three  o’clock  we  all  gathered  in  front  of 
Mr.  Moody’s  mother’s  house  (she  was  then 
still  living) ,  and  then  began  to  pass  down 
the  lane,  through  the  gate,  up  on  the 
mountainside.  There  were  four  hundred 
and  fifty-six  of  us  in  all;  I  know  the  num¬ 
ber  because  Paul  Moody  counted  us  as  we 
passed  through  the  gate. 

After  a  while  Mr.  Moody  said;  “  I  don’t 
think  we  need  to  go  any  further ;  let  us  sit 
down  here.”  We  sat  down  on  stumps  and 
logs  and  on  the  ground.  Mr.  Moody  said : 
“  Have  any  of  you  students  anything  to 
say?  ”  I  think  about  seventy-five  of  them 
arose,  one  after  the  other,  and  said:  “  Mr. 
Moody,  I  could  not  wait  till  three  o’clock ; 
I  have  been  alone  with  God  since  the  morn¬ 
ing  service,  and  I  believe  I  have  a  right 
to  say  that  I  have  been  baptized  with  the 
Holy  Spirit.”  When  these  testimonies 
were  over,  Mr.  Moody  said:  ‘‘  Young  men, 
I  can’t  see  any  reason  why  we  shouldn’t 
kneel  down  here  right  now  and  ask  God 


WHY  GOD  USED  D.  L.  MOODY  59 


that  the  Holy  Ghost  may  fall  upon  us  just 
as  definitely  as  He  fell  upon  the  apostles 
on  the  Day  of  Pentecost.  Let  us  pray.” 
And  we  did  pray,  there  on  the  mountain¬ 
side.  As  we  had  gone  up  the  mountain¬ 
side  heavj^  clouds  had  been  gathering,  and 
just  as  we  began  to  pray  those  clouds 
broke  and  the  rain-drops  began  to  fall 
through  the  overhanging  pines.  But  there 
was  another  cloud  that  had  been  gathering 
over  Northfield  for  ten  days,  a  cloud  big 
with  the  mercy  and  grace  and  power  of 
God,  and  as  we  began  to  pray  our  prayers 
seemed  to  pierce  that  cloud  and  the  Holy 
Ghost  fell  upon  us.  Men  and  women, 
that  is  what  we  all  need — the  Baptism  with 
the  Holy  Ghost. 


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